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Demon-Haunted World

locusmag.com

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Re: Demon-Haunted World

#31

Post by kbenson »

mikeash wrote: post #29
zaroth wrote: post #17

Why do our phones, which certainly felt damn snappy the day we bought them, inevitablely seem to slow down to the point of unusability after a couple dozen months? Even after a factory reset and installing no apps at all... I know it didn't take that long to open/close the built in apps when I bought that iPhone 4, 5, 5s... The only thing I can think of is the flash drive is slowing down as it wears. Or, the CPU cloc…

Next time I get a new phone, I'm going to put together a performance testing plan and record a video of it on the new phone. Then any time I wonder about this, I can run through the plan again and compare with the recording. So, ask me again in a few years.

Please publish/open source the testing criteria, so others can do the test and submit their own results. That would be awesome. I would probably run around the house and test all the phones in my family.

Even something as simple as Github and using pull requests for those that know how to do so (or manually just adding for those that email and don't) would give a lot of introspection, and allow you to share commit bits so people could help (as well as making it easy for people to clone to run analysis on if they desire).

Re: Demon-Haunted World

#32

Post by [deleted] »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #10

This is what I think about at the pump. More and more I see gas pumps ask if you want a receipt BEFORE the gas is dispensed. This seems risky. If you decline the receipt and then dispense gas, the pump could cheat on the amount of gas dispensed with less risk, as a papered record of the purchase amount and price is not produced. If on the other hand, the pump waits to ask if you desire a receipt until after the gasol…

[deleted]

Re: Demon-Haunted World

#33

Post by clwg »

ineptech wrote: post #12
ehsankia wrote: post #11

I'm curious about the WannaCry situation. If the killswitch was truly to detect being in a VM, could they still not have bought the domain and just left unresponsive, or even better, just generate a random new domain every single time. I guess they just didn't foresee someone buying the domain.

> or even better, just generate a random new domain every single time. I'm no expert, but I do recall reading in one of the WC write-ups that there is known malware that does this.

It's called a DGA or domain generation algorithm, I believe Conficker was one of the first botnet's to use this approach about 10 years ago, it's pretty standard trade craft nowadays.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_generation_algorithm

Re: Demon-Haunted World

#34

Post by to3m »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #10

This is what I think about at the pump. More and more I see gas pumps ask if you want a receipt BEFORE the gas is dispensed. This seems risky. If you decline the receipt and then dispense gas, the pump could cheat on the amount of gas dispensed with less risk, as a papered record of the purchase amount and price is not produced. If on the other hand, the pump waits to ask if you desire a receipt until after the gasol…

But according to this theory, it sounds as if one should ask for the receipt afterwards?

Re: Demon-Haunted World

#35

Post by SubiculumCode »

to3m wrote: post #34
SubiculumCode wrote: post #10

This is what I think about at the pump. More and more I see gas pumps ask if you want a receipt BEFORE the gas is dispensed. This seems risky. If you decline the receipt and then dispense gas, the pump could cheat on the amount of gas dispensed with less risk, as a papered record of the purchase amount and price is not produced. If on the other hand, the pump waits to ask if you desire a receipt until after the gasol…

But according to this theory, it sounds as if one should ask for the receipt afterwards?

By one do you mean the consumer? Gas pump software seems to come with two variants: 1) Ask before pumping gas. 2) Ask after pumping gas.

Re: Demon-Haunted World

#36

Post by naringas »

dclowd9901 wrote: post #4

Counterpoint: software such as thermostats that control our energy consumption or phones that lock themselves while you're driving are better if people can't consume in a responsible manner. Is it nanny-state? Yes, but maybe some people need a nanny.

> maybe some people need a nanny.

children do

Re: Demon-Haunted World

#37

Post by andai »

lostmsu wrote: post #18
zaroth wrote: post #17

Why do our phones, which certainly felt damn snappy the day we bought them, inevitablely seem to slow down to the point of unusability after a couple dozen months? Even after a factory reset and installing no apps at all... I know it didn't take that long to open/close the built in apps when I bought that iPhone 4, 5, 5s... The only thing I can think of is the flash drive is slowing down as it wears. Or, the CPU cloc…

How about this simple hypothesis: Android is suffering from the same problems all Windows had prior to Windows 7 - drive fragmentation. Cheap flash will not give you nice access times when data is fragmented, and over time fragmentation accumulates.

I thought fragmentation was a non-issue on solid state storage?

Re: Demon-Haunted World

#38

Post by leggomylibro »

zaroth wrote: post #17

Why do our phones, which certainly felt damn snappy the day we bought them, inevitablely seem to slow down to the point of unusability after a couple dozen months? Even after a factory reset and installing no apps at all... I know it didn't take that long to open/close the built in apps when I bought that iPhone 4, 5, 5s... The only thing I can think of is the flash drive is slowing down as it wears. Or, the CPU cloc…

I don't get this; everyone says it, but I've never seen it in smartphones. Laptops, sure, but Windows really DOES accumulate a lot of cruft, and OSX's updates never seem to improve performance.

Smartphones, though? The only slowdown I've noticed is when the battery starts to go. And then you can usually tell; the device gets hot as the battery pushes up against all the ESR it's accumulated, the CPU steps back a bit...that's what I figure, anyways. For me, it's always coincided with the same inflection point when I start really noticing things like charge cycles taking much longer and a sharp drop-off in the life of a 100% charge.

Re: Demon-Haunted World

#40

Post by harrisi »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #10

This is what I think about at the pump. More and more I see gas pumps ask if you want a receipt BEFORE the gas is dispensed. This seems risky. If you decline the receipt and then dispense gas, the pump could cheat on the amount of gas dispensed with less risk, as a papered record of the purchase amount and price is not produced. If on the other hand, the pump waits to ask if you desire a receipt until after the gasol…

Certainly having the receipt doesn't actually do anything? Do you measure the volume of gas in your tank before and after filling up?

Regardless, this seems very easy to test. Just fill up a gas can and check that you're paying the right amount for the amount of gas in the can.

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